Deuteronomy 5:11

5:11 You must not make use of the name of the Lord your God for worthless purposes, ¹  for the Lord will not exonerate anyone who abuses his name that way. ² 

Deuteronomy 5:1

The Opening Exhortation

5:1 Then Moses called all the people of Israel together and said to them: ³  “Listen, Israel, to the statutes and ordinances that I am about to deliver to you today; learn them and be careful to keep them!

Deuteronomy 2:9

2:9 Then the Lord said to me, “Do not harass Moab and provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land as your territory. This is because I have given Ar ⁴  to the descendants of Lot ⁵  as their possession.

[5:11]  ¹ tn Heb “take up the name of the Lord your God to emptiness”; KJV “take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” The idea here is not cursing or profanity in the modern sense of these terms but rather the use of the divine Name for unholy, mundane purposes, that is, for meaningless (the Hebrew term is שָׁוְא) and empty ends. In ancient Israel this would include using the Lord’s name as a witness in vows one did not intend to keep.

[5:11]  ² tn Heb “who takes up his name to emptiness.”

[5:1]  ³ tn Heb “and Moses called to all Israel and he said to them”; NAB, NASB, NIV “Moses summoned (convened NRSV) all Israel.”

[2:9]  ⁴ sn Ar was a Moabite city on the Arnon River east of the Dead Sea. It is mentioned elsewhere in the “Book of the Wars of Yahweh” (Num 21:15; cf. 21:28; Isa 15:1). Here it is synonymous with the whole land of Moab.

[2:9]  ⁵ sn The descendants of Lot. Following the destruction of the cities of the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah, as God’s judgment, Lot fathered two sons by his two daughters, namely, Moab and Ammon (Gen 19:30-38). Thus, these descendants of Lot in and around Ar were the Moabites.